U.S. Senate
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(D) J. Hickenlooper*
(R) Somebody
80%
20%
Governor
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(D) Phil Weiser
(D) Joe Neguse
(D) Jena Griswold
60%
60%
40%↓
Att. General
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(D) M. Dougherty
(D) Alexis King
(D) Brian Mason
40%
40%
30%
Sec. of State
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(D) A. Gonzalez
(D) George Stern
(R) Sheri Davis
50%↑
40%
30%
State Treasurer
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(D) Brianna Titone
(R) Kevin Grantham
(D) Jerry DiTullio
60%
30%
20%
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(R) Jeff Hurd*
(D) Somebody
80%
40%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert*
(D) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Jeff Crank*
(D) Somebody
80%
20%
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
(R) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) B. Pettersen*
(R) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(R) Gabe Evans*
(D) Yadira Caraveo
(D) Joe Salazar
50%
40%
40%
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
April 18, 2009 04:13 PM UTC
28 Comments
In honor of the house getting it done on the budget, here’s Zhanna…
..that, and the fact she’s a badass witch in those movies..
Great Bill Moyers interview last night with David Simon, creator of the TV show The Wire and former crime reporter in Baltimore:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/jour…
Moyers and Simon talk about the War on Drugs, the state of newspapers in America, and what a TV show can do that journalism can’t.
Crime is both decreasing (re-elect me) and increasing (increase my budget).
I bet that in the smallest of social units, an ancient tribal village, someone was blowing smoke to the group. And I don’t mean tobacco or marijuana.
Brandon Shaffer
Rob Riggle
who found stardom on The Daily Show on Comedy Central.
thanks
I’m impatiently waiting for the next season on Beeb America.
Torture is excused
Institutional sadism
Jesus damns us all
Nixon in China
Obama meets with Chavez
Reagan Gorbachav
Went to look for the paper this morning and couldn’t find it. Asked my wife – she cancelled it 6 weeks ago because we never read it. We read the Camera online but not the printed one.
Now we’re just a single data point. But my guess is that this is being repeated in household after household where people realize the paper is going straight from the driveway to the recycle bin and are cancelling it.
And now there’s this info from Pew Research – h/t Daily KOS where it’s pretty clear that the Internet is replacing the newspaper, and the trend lines look likely to continue.
I think we’re going to hit a period where reputable news sources are rare until some new companies find a way to make delivering news successful.
I’d like to hope that the existing newspapers find a way to survive. But they all seem way too wedded to the existing way of doing business. They tweak the existing system for the web, but don’t come close to what could be done. And their advantage from their existing customer base drops every day with every cancelled subscription.
It’s like Tower Records all over again.
…I’d like to believe that it’s the nature of Dutch politics and the high level of education that keep people reading newspapers, but I think it’s simply the cold logic of marketing.
Every Dutch newspaper is printed in color. No just the front page, but every page. The layouts are bold and attractive, there’s extra editorial illustration when there’s not a good photo, and the ads are smaller and more evenly distributed throughout the paper.
There’s also only a handful that do national and world news, while the remainder focus on local and regional news. I happen to believe that people like reading about themselves and their community over other news, and Dutch newspapers deliver on that view.
Lastly, the fact that so many people use public transportation in Holland plays directly into the strength of a newspaper. The average train ride takes 20-30mins, which is the ideal length of time to read most Dutch newspapers.
Yes, you could read the news from a website on a mobile device. I own an iPhone, but I do not ever look forward to reading anything on it via the web browser, esp important news or commentary.
Todays Denver Post has a Susan Greene column, and an editorial with polar opposite positions on the recently introduced sentencing reform bill. Ritter doesn’t want to tackle this in any way prior to re-election and the dicussion about the Commission approach and the need for a comprehensive review is a way to stall till he is a lame duck. The DAs who say that sentencing reform needs to be evidence based – have never before argued for the need for evidence when they have asked the legislature for stiffer penalties, and now they are crying over the need for more research. It strikes me as a very narrow perspective on criminal justice to believe that justice and time served are the same thing.
Yes there are people who are dangerous and need to be kept away from the rest of us, but is spending society’s money on feeding, sheltering, and managing a whole host of folks who might not be dangerous, a good use of public dollars? Can’t we be more creative here? Lots of new evidence recently about lots of programs that work and are much cheaper than prison. Why are we so wedded to the penitentiary as the answer? Interestingly, these were developed as an alternative to violence, where the inmate would pray, read the bible, and become penitent. Perhaps some think this is still effective, but the recidivism research indicates otherwise. What we are doing now, absolutely doesn’t work, so lets be open to possibilites. Even the post editorial says bring something back next year. The DAs want a much longer process, and I will wager, so does Ritter. It shouldn’t wait, but I do agree it may be too late for this session.
Large penitentiaries are like the old housing projects used to be, in large cities. At the time the “projects” were created they were viewed as a major step forward to house those who could not afford other housing. In subsequent years they became large centers of crime and social deterioration. No one seems to question the need for large, state-run prisons, but they are very difficult places for a well-motivated person to successfully rehabilitate themselves. Perhaps it’s time to de-centralize corrections even more, for those who are not violent and an imminent danger to others or themselves.
I have seen some corrections research related to juveniles, that supports the contention that smaller is better, more effective.
From the Denver Post
Fair enough, if they get the money that have to move fast (it’s a stimulus) and show they are using it wisely. So how do we sit?
Ok, personal rant here. This is very frustrating to me. The reporting system my company sells is exactly what they need, trivially easy to use and reports are designed very quickly. But can we get anyone anywhere to talk to us? With very rare execptions – no.
This is not just the state government here. It’s 44 of the states and all of the federal government. Oh no, heaven forbid we look for a better way of doing this, instead let’s just complain that using the old way we can’t get it done.
Ok, rant off.
Perhaps you can get someone at OIT to talk to you. John Conley is the deputy director, and it is possible to get an appointment with him.
these guys have a virtual reality system that is used to recreate the incident that is causing a vet PTSD. It is a very realistic system with virtual reality, a seat that can bounch for the shocks due to explosions, and it provides a very realistic recreation.
They are still testing its effectiveness but according to the VP there I talked to for awhile at HIMSS the initial results look very very promising. This could be a big help for vets to get back to a point that they can get on with their lives.
They also have another program where they are training social workers to work with PTSD vets. It’s not the best solution, as opposed to a highly trained individual who is also a vet. But there aren’t enough of the fully trained people and someone well trained is better than nothing.
Again, they are still measuring how well it’s working, but appears to be very successful so far. Especially in places where there are no services and it’s that or nothing.
…I saw a briefing on this a while ago. It started in San Diego, and it’s had enormous success as a way to abate PTSD symptoms.
I think part of the reason for it’s success is the buy-in that the younger vets give it. Generation Kill was raised on FPS video games, and this is a natural place for them to go for escape.
The Colorado Coalition Against Domestic Violence is pushing a bill to get more money into DV services, because the programs really need it, and especially because DV goes up with the bad economy. Apparently programs are also seeing a huge need for services among returning veterans, so they originally decided to earmark some of the money for vets. The vets didn’t like that and felt like it was saying they had a problem, above and beyond the problems of the rest of the world, with DV, and so the language to help vets specifically was removed. Pride, pride, pride…
nullnullwherever else it’s been tried.
Let’s see, telephones, airlines, banks…
One more time….
PTSD and TBI are not domestic violence. It’s immoral, misinformed and just plain wrong to link the two.
When a spouse of a combat vet wakes up with hands on his/her throat because the Vet is having a PTSD flashback, it’s easy to call it domestic violence. But all that does is get the vet automatically arrested, and then kicked out the military after a court appearance.
That’s because due to the Lautenberg Amendment, anyone with a DV tag cannot own, possess or use firearms. That gets the Service Member automatically separated from service.
Now, we have a family who no longer has a primary breadwinner, who cannot get another job due to the DV tag, and who has severe mental health issues who cannot get help from the VA (since separations from DV are usually bad conduct discharges, which negates any right to VA care.)
Both chairs of the Vets court (Myself and Bob Alvarez in the Springs) have written, testified call and otherwise fought ANY attempt to link the two.
We need funding for DV programs because they’re needed. We REALLY need funding for PTSD and TBI because these vets are coming home, and they earned the care.
But linking the two as a legislative funding stunt is WRONG!!!!
but the two are inevitably linked due to an unfortunate evidentiary problem. It seems to me self-evident, human beings being human beings (and lawyers being lawyers), that anyone who happens to be both a combat veteran and a perpetrator of domestic violence (the real thing), a coincidence, in this hypothetical, that has no causal connection, then that individual will certainly attempt a PTSD defense, despite the fact that in this scenario they do not happen to suffer from PTSD. And I agree that a PTSD defense should be absolute, if it prevails.
But the nature of our criminal justice system is that nothing is assumed, except innocence until proof of guilt. Therefore, both advocates for greater likelihood of conviction in cases of DV, and advocates for those who suffer from PTSD, have very legitimate reasons to be concerned about how PTSD-violence jurisprudence plays out, because the evidentiary net that is woven will affect the number of false positives (ie, people who have PTSD, rather than who commit DV, being convicted of DV) and false negatives (ie, people who commit DV, rather than have PTSD, who are acquitted).
This is a dilemma that I don’t believe has any simple and conclusive solution. I think that the two are inevitably linked for jurisprudential reasons, though they should certainly be disaggregated in every other way.
(There is, also, the subtle question of a continuum rather than a dichotomy, and the notion that the stress of combat might lead to increased incidence of DV in general, raising issues of where to invoke personal responsibility/culpability v. where to invoke involuntariness due to conditions determining behavior, an age old question for which some have simple and absolute answers. But I don’t want to muddy the water of this more basic point by getting into that).